by Kyle Mills
She tossed the shirt over her shoulder and started climbing.
“Now, be careful. Those things can poke through and—”
“Relax, already. I used to be a rock climber, remember?”
“It was a weekend corporate retreat, Carly. And it was six years ago.”
When she got to the top, she held on with one hand and used the other to wind the shirt around the wire. It gave her just enough space to throw a leg over, and she eased across it before working her way down the other side.
When she got to the bottom, she put a palm against the links. He did the same, pressing his damp hand into hers and chewing his lower lip.
“Impressed?” she said.
“Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe…”
She shook her head. “Our other choice is to stand around and wait for these people to find us. And to find Susie. Don’t worry— what are the chances that this is anything but some rich Polish guy’s bachelor pad?”
He looked at his watch. “Don’t screw around, OK, Carly? You’re probably right, but if this is the place they’re keeping Mason, they’re going to have security. We’re just trying to see if there could be a lab on the property. So get the lay of the land and be back here in no more than forty-five minutes.”
“Quit being such an old lady,” she said, poking playfully at his hand. “I’m going to be fine.”
28
Western Argentina
May 4
When Carly looked back, the trees had swallowed up the fence, her husband, and everything else.
This all seemed like some kind of drug-induced nightmare. How could any of it be real? How could they have gone from the routine desperation their lives had become to being hunted and officially dead? To slinking across international borders a thousand miles from their daughter and climbing barbed wire fences?
Strangely, though, those weren’t the things causing her hands to shake and her heart to pound.
Over the last eight years, she’d had no choice but to wrap herself in her own helplessness, to accept what the world had given her. What it had done to her. But now she could feel a little bit of what Richard had been living with for so long—the crush of responsibility, the gravity of hope. The belief, no matter how small, that she actually could do something for their daughter. And with that, the paralyzing fear that she could fail.
The trees around her thinned as she came to the edge of a pond full of flamingos. The angle of the sun had turned the water into a mirror that reflected their pink feathers, and she watched them as she skirted the water, trying her best to stay in the shadows.
It took another ten minutes to reach the small dock on the far shore, and she followed a trail up a gradual slope, hoping that it would lead her to the house. Everything was so still and beautiful, it was hard to stay vigilant. To believe there was anything here that could hurt her.
When she crested the rise, she raised a hand to shade her eyes from the sun and then stopped short when she saw the man sitting motionless at the edge of the trail. He was no more than fifteen feet away, and she felt a burst of adrenaline when she realized that she hadn’t thought about what she would do if this happened. Should she say something? In English? In Spanish? Should she just run?
He looked to be in his early forties despite longish hair that was completely silver. His eyes were red rimmed and stood out against unnaturally pale skin, suggesting illness or exhaustion or both. Despite all this, there was something familiar about him— the intensity of his stare, the nose that was a little too long and straight for his face. When he raised a hand to point at her, she saw that each of his fingers was tipped in gauze.
“Who are you?” he said in English. “What are you doing here?”
Her breath caught at the sound of his voice, and she couldn’t seem to get it started again. He began lurching toward her, and she wanted to run but found herself transfixed by his face as it gained detail.
“This is private property!” he said, wincing as his damaged fingers closed around her arm.
“I…” she stammered, “I didn’t know.”
“How did you get in here? Tell me!”
She blinked hard and gave her head a violent shake, clearing her mind enough to jerk her arm from his feeble grip.
“Stop!” he shouted when she began to run. The crunch of his footfalls started on the trail behind her, but when she finally dared to glance back, he was on one knee, fumbling with a phone.
She slowed and finally stopped, once again mesmerized by the man, but not so much so that she forgot the digital camera in her pocket. He was intent enough on dialing that he didn’t look up until she was centering his image in the viewfinder. The shutter closed just as he was throwing an arm up in front of his face.
“Richard!” Carly shouted as she burst from the trees and saw him pacing along the fence line.
He took a startled step backward when she slammed into the chain link and began climbing. “What? What the hell happened?”
“Run!”
“I’m not going to just leave—”
“Get the car started, damnit! Go!”
He hesitated for a moment, but by the time she made it to the barbed wire, he had disappeared into the forest.
Her climb was less graceful this time, and she caught her leg on a barb before falling over the top. Already on the verge of throwing up from exertion, she didn’t look down at her leg, instead clamping a hand over the gash and hobbling toward the open field they’d come across on their way in.
Richard was nearly to the ditch at the edge of the road when she heard the roar of an engine. In her peripheral vision, she saw an open Jeep with two men in it barreling across the field toward her. Letting go of her wound, she began to sprint, the burning in her lungs quickly overpowering the pain in her leg.
The Jeep was coming fast, but she stayed on course toward the pullout where they’d left the car. They wouldn’t catch her. Not now. She wouldn’t let them.
The sound of the motor spiked as the driver downshifted and skidded around the ruts and boulders she was stumbling through. Dust and gravel billowed over her, and she shot a glance backward, seeing that the Jeep’s bumper was only a few feet behind. They were going to run her down.
And then she was falling—tumbling into the ditch just before the Jeep sailed over her head and slammed into the far bank.
She lay there dazed, staring up at the bottom of the vehicle that was now suspended directly above her. Fuel was draining from the tank in a thick gush, forming a stream that was making its way toward her and filling her nostrils with its stench. She tried to get to her feet but collapsed, waiting for the inevitable spark and the explosion that would engulf her.
Instead, a pair of hands grabbed her under the arms and began pulling her away. She flailed weakly against them, trying to escape.
“Carly! It’s me! Stop fighting.”
She relaxed at the sound of her husband’s voice, allowing herself to be dragged from the Jeep’s shadow.
Inside the open vehicle, the man who had been in the passenger seat was now lying halfway through the windshield. The skin on his face was shredded, and he’d been nearly cut in half at the waist by the glass. The driver was in better condition, staring groggily at them as he clawed for the gun in his shoulder holster.
Richard released her to climb out of the ditch and then dangled a hand down. She pedaled her feet against the loose dirt as he pulled her up, waiting for the crack of the man’s pistol and the bullet that would not only end her own life but rob Susie of a future that suddenly seemed possible.
She made it over the edge, and Richard kept pulling, dragging her across the rocky soil as she tried to regain her footing. The gun finally sounded, raising a spray of dust from the edge of the ditch, but by then Richard had shoved her into the car and was sliding back across the hood. Once behind the wheel, he slammed the accelerator to the floor and fishtailed out onto the asphalt.
A second shot drowned out the echo of
the first, and he pushed her down in her seat as he fought to keep control of the vehicle. Bullets kept coming, but none found their mark, and soon the terrifying ring of them faded into the grinding of the transmission and the wind coming through the open windows.
“Are you all right?” he said. “Carly? Talk to me! Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said, trying to sit straight, but then just crumpling against the door.
“Your leg. Were you shot?”
She shook her head, and he grabbed a sweatshirt from the back, pressing it against her thigh.
“Hang on, OK? We have to turn around and get you to a—”
“No!” she said, grabbing the wheel and holding it steady. “Keep going!”
“But—”
“I’m all right. Just keep going.”
Carly released the wheel and leaned forward, trying to control the wave of nausea washing over her. “Oh my God,” she said quietly. “Oh my God.”
29
Near the Border of Chile
May 4
Richard Draman twisted around in the bed of the pickup and squinted through its back window into the cab. The two men inside were having an animated conversation, laughing and jabbing at each other as the vehicle sped along the dark road. They seemed to have completely forgotten the two American hitchhikers they’d rescued from the side of the road an hour earlier.
Satisfied they weren’t being watched, Richard turned back to the computer on his lap. Carly was pressed up against him despite the fact that the heat of the day still lingered in the wind.
“I’m right,” she said. “You know I am.”
He focused again on the photograph filling the screen. With the exception of the man’s hand, which had blurred as he tried to cover his face, the image was surprisingly sharp. Richard examined every detail—the wavy gray hair, the pale skin, the unique slope of the nose.
“Maybe it’s a relative. A cousin or something.”
“So they kidnapped his cousin too?”
He didn’t answer, instead clicking on the video they’d downloaded of August Mason making a speech in the mid eighties. To say that the resemblance was uncanny would be a gross understatement. It was staggering.
“See how his fingers look white in the picture?” she said, raising her voice to overcome the sound of the driver accelerating around a farm truck.
“Yeah. Why?”
“They’re bandages.”
It took a moment to put meaning to her words. “Altered fingerprints?”
“How else would you injure every fingertip on both hands without hurting anything else?”
“No,” he said, turning away from the computer and staring into the dark landscape rushing by. “There has to be another explanation.”
“He spoke to me, Richard. It was his voice—the voice of the man on the video. I’m telling you, it’s him. It’s him, and he’s younger now.”
“I can’t—”
“Are you telling me it’s scientifically impossible?”
“Yes!” he blurted, but then thought better of it. “No. It’s not impossible. It’s just that—”
“So it could be done,” Carly pressed. “It’s feasible.”
He thought about it, sorting through everything he knew about the biology of aging, which was more than just about anyone on the planet. Or so he’d thought.
“Yesterday, I would have said that we were a hundred years from reversing the aging process. Now, I’m not sure.”
“But you were working on curing Susie. You didn’t think you were a hundred years from that.”
“She only has one genetically driven aspect of aging, Carly. That’s why kids like her don’t suffer from things like osteoarthritis and dementia. I wanted to fix the genetic defect that causes her symptoms, but that’s a million miles away from reversing the aging process.”
“Because some other aspect of aging would eventually kill her like it does everybody else,” Carly said, picking up his thought.
“Exactly. Most people don’t know it, but not all animals get old. Lobsters for instance. Barring accidents or predators or disease, they seem to just keep going. But we do age—all mammals do.”
“Why? What benefit is it to get old and die? How does that serve evolution’s purpose?”
“The most important thing to remember about evolution is that it doesn’t have a purpose. It’s just about passing on more genes than your competitors at any given moment. Mammals first cropped up during the time of the dinosaurs. They were small and stuck on the bottom of the food chain. So, it was best for them to reproduce young—before they got eaten, or stepped on, or whatever. Having the ability to live a long time wasn’t under strong selection because something else was going to kill them anyway. That was true of humans too. It wasn’t long ago that living to be thirty-five was the exception, not the rule.”
“But some mammals live a long time, don’t they?”
“Sure. Whales are an example. They might live as long as two hundred years, but their lives have been extended by small, incremental changes that take into account they aren’t likely to die from other causes like our common ancestors. Mortality is still there, though. It’s programmed into all mammals on a fundamental level.”
“Maybe not so fundamental,” Carly said.
He didn’t answer, mentally ticking off the myriad causes of aging and trying to come up with a feasible method to not only solve them but reverse their course.
“I know what I saw, Richard. That was August Mason, and he’s not much older than we are now.”
He leaned his head back against the cab and stared up at the unfamiliar stars for a long time before speaking again. “Most biologists are like me, Carly. They’re detail people. But not Mason. He was looking at the big picture. Not to sound melodramatic, but he was looking for the secret of life. Something new, something fundamental that no one had thought of before.”
He felt increasingly short of breath as his mind grappled with the enormity of Mason’s discovery. Richard remembered telling his daughter that Mason was like Newton or Darwin. But he’d been wrong. While they may have seen into the mind of God, Mason had figured out a way to step into God’s shoes.
“What do we do now?” Carly said.
“I…I don’t know. Do you understand what this means? What’s at stake here? We’re talking a paradigm shift on the same order as the invention of agriculture. I mean, if it’s possible—”
“We should assume that he’s going to figure out who I am,” she said in an obvious attempt to keep him focused on the here and now. “If they didn’t already know we’re alive, they will soon.”
Richard barely heard her. “He did it, Carly. He translated the language of life. He must be able to model the genome in a way that allows him to make changes and see what the outcome is. Can he engineer something completely new? Something that nature has never even considered? Jesus—can he create life? What—”
“Richard!” she said, grabbing hold of his shoulder and giving him a shake. “There’ll be time to think about all that later. Right now, we need to figure out how we’re going to stay ahead of one of the most brilliant men who ever lived and one of the richest and most powerful. We need to find a phone. Call Burt. Warn—”
“It’s not Xander,” he said, cutting her off.
“What?”
“Think about it, Carly. He’s got one foot in the grave. Why would he be rolling around in his wheelchair funding aging research and pestering Mason’s assistant? No, if he had access to this, he’d have disappeared and would be well on his way to youth again.”
She thought about that for a moment. “OK, it’s not Xander. But it’s somebody. And based on what we’ve seen, they’re just as powerful. We need to figure out how we’re going to stay ahead of them.”
He shook his head. “We can’t run anymore.”
“What? You’re not suggesting we just give up. There—”
“You don’t understand,” he said, turning
to her. “He’s reversed aging, Carly. All aspects of aging. Including the one killing Susie.”
“Are you telling me that this could help her? That it could cure her?”
He nodded, eyes glowing with reflected light. “I’m never going to be able to do research again—if the cops don’t get me, these people will. This is Susie’s chance. Her only chance. I don’t care who these people are. I don’t care how powerful they are. I don’t care how violent they are. We’re going to get on a plane back to the States, and we’re going to hunt them down. We’re going to make them help her.”
30
North of Baltimore, Maryland
May 6
Richard eased the car Seeger had rented for them along the winding driveway, glancing over at his wife as she nervously scanned the dense trees lining it. The only things keeping her going at this point were adrenaline and determination. He’d stitched up the gash in her leg, and it was beginning to heal, but the long flight back to the U.S. had been incredibly painful for her. Dark circles were distinct beneath her eyes despite the sunburn she’d suffered in Argentina.
Chris Graden’s house emerged as they crested a small hill, and Richard reflected on the time they’d spent there over the years— dinners, backyard barbeques, late-night drinking sessions. Now all he could think about was how similar the secluded location and over-the-top security were to August Mason’s home—as though they had been designed with the same goals in mind. Ironically, it was their phony, toxic friendship with Graden that had defeated all those defenses. They still had the gate code.
Richard rolled to a stop beneath the portico and turned the engine off.
“Showtime.”
Carly stepped from the car and walked up to the door, pausing while he pressed himself against the house’s stone façade in an effort to stay out of sight.
What was on the other side? Coming there was an act of desperation, and they both knew it. Mason would be a thousand miles from Argentina by now, and their realization that Xander wasn’t involved left Chris Graden as the only thread left for them to pull.
